Monthly Archives: January 2015

A couple of months ago, we made the decision to make a big change in our lives. Heck… Can’t be all about triathlons. So what is that change? Well… We decided to move half way across the country to the East Coast. It is a big change for us, but we don’t only see it as a big change but also a big opportunity. For me it’s a huge professional opportunity and for Felipe it is an opportunity for change. While he won’t be changing jobs, it is still an opportunity.

So, why change and why embrace it? We had decided a few months ago, back when we did our ChallengeAC race, that we wanted to head back closer to family. I’m a Jerz girl and you know what they say… Can take the girl out of Jerz, but can’t take the Jerz out of the girl, so there you have it…. Just kidding, my family is still all there so it just makes sense to get back closer to them after almost 13 years of being away from them. So last year the search started, and while we were looking at a more long term plan of abut 3-5 years, we saw an opportunity for my job that we couldn’t let go just like that and I got selected for it. We got the news the day before Ironman Arizona so you can imagine the mixed emotions racing and just in general.

We gathered our thoughts back in late November and started planning the move. In a 2 month period, put our house on the market, sold our house in TX, planned a house hunting trip, found a dream home in 3 days, started the declutter process of a typical move and here we are 2 weeks before the big day and it seems like we got everything we need. Only if our closing date in NY works out can we call it a perfect move. Other than that it has been extremely smooth and with a few interesting stories along the way.

Our realtor is our good friend and teammate and she helped us through the process in Texas. We knew the market in Texas was hot but with the holidays right around the corner we didn’t have too much hope so we had to put the home as early as possible to give as much cushion on our schedule for it to sell. Only 7 days after it went live we had 2 offers. What is interesting is that one of the offers was a young couple with a little boy that happened to be both triathletes and runners. After learning that, and reading their story because of course, the offer came accompanied with their story (just like a blog entry) we decided to go with them, they felt like they were the perfect fit for our home.

We went off to NY that same week we sold our home and we started looking, maybe 100 houses later (which seemed like 1000) and 3 days of full search mode, we found our dream home, of course it being the first one we had seen the entire weekend. Funny thing is that we looked at the homes to make sure we liked them but for us a few things were important, any running trails nearby, are there any bike routes around, and is there a bike shop nearby. Well… This one has all of the above and on top of that it is only 15 min from the train station for Felipe to catch the train into Manhattan. For me, it is the same drive I do right now so no change on that end.

When things are meant to be… All will fall into place. Who would’ve thought that 6 months after spending 2 weeks on vacation and racing, would we make these huge decisions in our lives. Which brings us to how we have embraced our change. For us a big drive was to be close to family, but at the same time looking out for opportunities to grow and see what else was out there. We feel like if you get too comfortable in a place it is like progress doesn’t happen. We were comfortable where we were, love our home, have our Tri family from our team, friends and have a life in Texas which we are really thankful for. Texas provided us that opportunity 8 years ago when we moved from Florida.

So while we will miss Texas, our friends and Tri family, we know our racing will allow us to see them often and we will be able to share with them our new experiences. We will definitely have to get used to seasons… Snow.. More snow.. And some more snow… We are looking forward to it. If change is not important, then why change at all.Change is supposed to be exciting and we are excited for it. We have our east coast racing plan in place for 2015 and we are really looking forward to exploring the area. Being close to NYC will be pretty awesome too… And for Felipe a dream come true to work in Manhattan. He is a true city boy. We will try to document our move…either with pics or little posts here and there on either one of our blogs, but definitely stay tuned!